2005: first Cyber Monday

The term Cyber Monday refers to today -- the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the US. In 2006, more than 60 million people shopped online on Cyber Monday.

The word "cyberspace" -- from "cybernetics" (information processing) and "space" -- was coined by author William Gibson in his 1982 story Burning Chrome and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer. He wrote: "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data."

Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, Cyber Monday is a busy day for online retailers. The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, sponsored by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division, in which online retailers offer special deals.

The term “Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 by Shop.org. However, the trend of Cyber Monday was initially recognized several years ago, when many retailers saw spikes in sales and traffic as consumers went back to work after the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Though Shop.org gave the Monday after Thanksgiving a name, it did not create the trend.

According to a study, two-thirds (63.4%) of retailers saw substantial growth on Cyber Monday in 2006 and a third of online retailers (32.6%) said that their Cyber Monday sales were up more than 30% from the previous year.

At the official "Cyber Monday" site, run by Shop.org, more than 500 retailers offered discounts for the 2007 holidays. A percentage of the proceeds of the site benefits the Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund, which gives scholarships to students pursuing an education in e-commerce. Greenly was a Vice President of Research and Member Services at Shop.org who died from lung cancer in 2005. (info from Shop.org & Wikipedia)